With the season fast approaching, it’s time to review what you need to know for the last couple weeks of drafting.
Waivers in Week One Run Wednesday Morning
Plan ahead, guys! We want nobody caught by surprise by this one.
Opening night is a Wednesday this year. We’ll be running waivers that day in the morning, rather than the usual time at 10pm ET. Waivers on September 9 will run at 10am ET, on both the DataForce platform and on MyFantasyLeague.
That morning, a half-hour after the scheduled waivers (10:30am ET), will be the first available Free Agency period. You can pick up players for free for the first time. They’ll be available as free agents until game time.
Free Agency will open again each week during the season after waivers on Wednesday, at 10:30pm ET.
Diamond Leagues Still Have Openings
We have openings for both email and live drafting still at the Diamond ($3000) level! No new Diamond leagues will be added this year, so if you want to play with the big dogs, your chance is disappearing fast! These leagues feature an amazing 98% prize return.
$3000 a little too steep? Find a friend and share the league together!
Here’s a quick Youtube video about what we offer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfz-HZ-oenQ
Holdouts Soon No Longer Qualify For I/R
Reminder: We’ve mentioned this twice before, but it bears repeating.
For years, we’ve allowed holdouts to qualify on I/R. In fact, we’ve allowed this since the COVID days, because it was the work-around at the time.
This changes when the season starts this year! Guys like Brandon Aiyuk, who are just holding out and not really on their team’s I/R, won’t be allowed on YOUR team’s I/R either.
Live Draft Spots Are Limited
We can runs lot of live drafts simultaneously, but not an unlimited number! Live auctions, in particular, eat up a lot of band width and commissioner time.
So we limit the leagues we offer on each day. We also carefully measure the expected time-to-fill for leagues, especially expensive or uncommon formats, and these are much less likely to get replenished as they fill.
Every year, we get late-comers asking “can’t you put up one more Gold league” or “I notice you’re all out of SuperSkinny leagues” and we feel badly to have to say no.
This all means that if you find a league in the lobby that fits the bill, nab it now!
Email Drafts Phasing Out Soon
We’re fast approaching the end of the email season. We’ll keep adding the more common formats, but we’re unlikely to add any more unique combinations.
This is particularly true of multi-year leagues like Dynasties! In fact, we’ve boosted ALL dynasties in the lobby to get the stragglers filled. Jump in now if you still want in one of these!
Remember: Beginning Monday, August 31, all 8-hour email draft timers decrease to 6 hours! This begins our accelerated period, where we push things along a little faster to make sure each draft finishes in time before the season begins.
The Newbie Corner: Player Searches While Drafting
Today I want to list a few hacks to help you find the player you’re looking for in the Available Players box while drafting, or selecting free agents, or bidding on waivers. Most of these hints play on the fact that each player’s name, as it’s listed in the box, includes both the position and the team – and these are searchable elements! So …
- Are you a Green Bay homie? Type GB in the search box to get all the Green Bay players.
- Forgot who the handcuff is for the player you just drafted? In the search box, type in the team abbreviation, switch to Running back, and make sure the order is ADP. More than likely, your guy will appear at the top of the list.
- Don’t know how to spell the name of the person you want? Use a partial search. ‘jerm’ will find everybody who’s first name includes those letters: ‘merrit’ will find Jacory Croskey-Merritt, and so on.
- Want to see just the available rookies, for your dynasty draft? Notice that the name for rookies includes “- R” at the end of it. So, search for that! Put “- R” (with a space) in the search bar.
- Can’t find the player you want in the ADP list? Switch the order to alphabetic, by clicking on the radio button titled Name. ALL players will now appear, not just those who have a reasonable ADP.
One final note about the Available Players box, but an important one: The RANK radio button is for when you prepare your own player ranking, using the Draft->MyDraftList page. If you have your own draft list, your draft page will default to RANK, showing YOUR list.
This can bite you in the butt when you get further into the draft, though, as your own list may start to run out of players. You’ll still see just the players you’ve chosen for your list when ordering by RANK. So, at some point, it’ll probably be useful to switch from RANK to ADP.
🏈 Leagues Forming Now at DataForce Fantasy Football! 🏈
Ready to draft? We offer the widest variety with the best prize payouts anywhere!
Come check out what we have available in our lobby and Orphan Marketplace.
Join the fun and draft your winning team today at DataForceFF.com!
Lee Harmon
Commissioner